


Fluff

by GretchenSinister



Series: GretchenSinister's Second Blacksand Week [8]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Wing Grooming, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23124883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Literal and metaphorical. I wanted winged Sandy so I wrote winged Sandy.Pitch is worried that Sandy’s not taking their relationship seriously. Sandy shows him how he’s wrong. And there’s wing grooming because hey, when a trope works with one OTP, bring it to all of them.
Relationships: Pitch Black/Sanderson Mansnoozie
Series: GretchenSinister's Second Blacksand Week [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1660444
Kudos: 17
Collections: Blacksand Short Fics





	Fluff

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 11/17/2013.

“Sandy, what’s all this about?” Pitch had thought he was growing accustomed to the odd, dream-logical gifts or appearances Sandy would often greet him with when they met over the Pacific, where dreams were less dense and they both had time to talk—and, well, do more than talk. He had certainly been surprised at how quickly their truce had led to Sandy inviting him to bed, but he had fewer than no objections to being the one whose body was given over to the Sandman’s clever little hands and mouth as a playground. Really, the only concern he had now was that Sandy wasn’t taking their arrangement as seriously as he was—that Sandy could tell Pitch’s treatment of his body was edging towards pure worship and that he laughed at him in secret for it.

And he wasn’t reassured, now, as Sandy answered his question by telling him that this was all about something he had said. Maybe Pitch had called Sandy an angel in the heat of passion and maybe he hadn’t. Regardless, Pitch thought it wasn’t a good reason for Sandy to show up sporting fluffy golden wings on his back tonight.

“You don’t need those to fly,” Pitch said, folding his arms and frowning. He turned away slightly and Sandy swooped in front of him. What was wrong? He wanted to know.

“You’re teasing me.”

Sandy pursed his lips and tilted his head back and forth. Maybe a little. But then again, he thought Pitch would enjoy this. He was! It was so different from travelling on a dreamsand cloud.

“That I would enjoy them?” Pitch glanced back at the wings. They were certainly beautiful, and he always liked having more of Sandy to touch, but with wings, he really had no idea what he was supposed to do. And why the novelty, always? This wasn’t about novelty for him, it was about Sandy, who had given him a second chance followed by a kiss. Was their relationship just a game to him? “Sandy, but it’s you—”

Sandy tapped him on the shoulder. Tag! You’re it! he signed, and zoomed off into the night, each powerful flap of his wings shaking dreamsand into the water below.

“—I like. Love,” he finished weakly, knowing Sandy was too far away to hear. He sighed. Still, it wasn’t as though he wasn’t going to join in the game. He leaned forward on his own cloud of nightmaresand, and began to give chase.

The night air streaming against his face lifted his spirits as he flew after Sandy, and he even began to smile when he realized that, going as fast as he could, he probably wouldn’t be able to catch Sandy unless he wanted to be caught. He must have practiced with those wings, Pitch thought, watching him speeding through the sky, wingbeats like thunderclaps in dead straight sprints, diving down to skim one wingtip, then the other, in the ocean water, leaving golden trails that might become the dreams of whales, spiraling upwards almost out of sight and taking the long way down to Pitch’s level in a roller-coaster crazy path of curlicues. When Pitch got close enough, he could see the wide grin on Sandy’s face, but when he got even closer, what he saw was Sandy’s cheeky little wave before he zoomed off again.

Finally, though, Pitch noticed that his loop-de-loops weren’t taking him forward very quickly. Taking a guess as to what route Sandy would choose, Pitch leapt from his cloud of nightmaresand and laughed as he realized he had guessed right when his leap turned into a tackle of the winged Sandman. He held onto him tightly, all feathers and dreamsand as they fell, Sandy startlingly warm after the rush of night air. Pitch wondered if he should catch them before they hit the water, but just at that moment, Sandy’s dreamsand cloud bloomed underneath them.

Safely afloat, Sandy no longer struggled against Pitch, choosing to nuzzle his chest instead. Pitch chuckled a little, noticing that most of the dreamsand that had swirled around them as they fell must have been from Sandy’s clothes, for Sandy was naked in his arms now—still with the wings, of course, though they didn’t look quite so fluffy and shiny anymore—rather disheveled, in fact. Assuming that Sandy meant for them to get even more disheveled in short order, he reached a hand under Sandy’s chin to tilt his head up for a kiss.

To his surprise, Sandy scooted little way back from Pitch, catching his eyes and waving his finger at him. Now, Pitch didn’t expect to get punched into the sky like the gesture had indicated in the past, but he was still a little confused. “What…what do you want?”

You messed up my wings, Sandy signed. Now you’ve got to fix them.

“I don’t know how.”

That’s all right. Sandy smiled and patted Pitch’s hand as he sat up and turned his back to him, spreading out his wings.

Pitch looked at the feathers before him, puzzled. Usually this was the part of the night when Sandy would be all over him, giving and demanding until they were both too exhausted to move. He shrugged. If Sandy wanted wings that he didn’t even really have groomed, it wasn’t going to do Pitch any good to refuse.

He began at the wingtips, the larger, smoother, feathers there easier to put into their proper places. Sandy wiggled happily as he went on, so he grew more confident as he began to straighten the feathers along the top edge of his wings. It was almost hypnotic, Pitch thought, setting the feathers right. As he worked his way inward, he began to groom both wings at once—which he had wanted to do from the beginning of this project, but up close and personal, Sandy’s wingspan was much bigger than he had first thought. He pressed closer, knees to either side of Sandy, his chest against his back, to make the stretch of his long arms count for even more of Sandy’s wingspan. The down where Sandy’s wings merged with his skin brushed against his chest and stomach, and he inhaled sharply. To call it soft would require everything else to be defined as having diamond hardness; to call it silky would require the finest silk itself to be thought of as being rough as burlap. He pressed his face into Sandy’s hair, closing his eyes and trying to recover, feeling Sandy silently laughing beneath him.

Pitch squeezed the illusory bone and muscle under the feathers in retaliation, but this didn’t work at all for that purpose.

Thanks, Sandy signed. Could use that after all the flying.

Well. All right then. Pitch started to massage Sandy’s wings as he groomed them, and when he wasn’t lost in the feeling of the warm feathers under his hands, every little movement of Sandy’s shoulders made Pitch wish he was able to make the sounds those movements indicated.

(Pitch had asked him about his silence once, if he would ever break it. Maybe, he had answered. Maybe.)

To massage the whole of Sandy’s wings required that Pitch dig his fingers under even the sections of feathers that had been mostly smooth, and this was where his conscious thought really began to slip away, hands filled with warm, pale golden down, soft past all believing. Many of the little feathers were loose and stuck to his hands when he pulled them away. When some fluttered away in the night breeze, they had a tendency to mostly dissolve into dreamsand, and Pitch felt his eyelids growing heavier and heavier as he worked his way from muscle to down to exterior feathers.

By the time the main parts of the wings were done and Pitch was once again at the center of Sandy’s back, he was reduced to dreamily stroking and petting the down there and along the base of the interior wing as well. He felt himself sliding forward, but unable to do anything about this fact, and let his face fall against Sandy’s shoulder. He nuzzled the down with his cheek, sliding further down, and when his slide stopped he pressed a light kiss to the center of Sandy’s back.

Despite their having been lovers for some time now, this seemed like quite a new thing. Pitch smiled at himself. Surely it couldn’t be. They’d done so much and—his eyes snapped open as it came to him that, yes, this was a new thing. Sandy had been so casual about the wing-grooming, he hadn’t realized. This was the first time Sandy had let Pitch be so close to his back for more than a moment.

Feeling like ice water had been dumped on his head, Pitch backed up just enough to look at the place on Sandy’s skin he had just kissed.

There it was. Just barely noticeable, but there all the same. A scar from a lethal wound, made by the only thing that could wound one such as the Sandman. Nightmaresand. In this case, a nightmaresand arrow.

“Sandy,” he whispered, not knowing what he was going to ask.

Sandy looked over his shoulder, his golden eyes blinking slowly on the edge of sleep and a smile as content as any Pitch had ever seen from him before on his lips. The ice water began to drain away. You did good, he signed.

“Was it a test?” Pitch asked, his nervousness not entirely gone.

Sandy shook his head. Not of you. He reached back and grabbed one of Pitch’s hands and kissed it, a few downy feathers sticking to his lips. He blew them away and silently giggled. Now. I’m sleepy. Let’s go flying again when we wake up. He lay down and folded his wings against his back. Like this, they extended far past his feet. His back was still to Pitch, and as Pitch lay down alongside Sandy, he felt as warm as his hands had been as they dug into the down. He didn’t have to worry about how seriously Sandy took their love anymore. After all, Sandy had been telling him all about just that for hours on end tonight.

Maybe Pitch didn’t need him to break his silence after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Tags and Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> #i need a back massage#and to take a nap with someone warm and cuddly#I need these things really bad
> 
> lithefider said: Help it’s so cute I’m dyingggg mah babies /HhhhnnnNnn/!


End file.
